Hallo! I’ve decided to start a new series called “Deutsch Donnerstag,” or “German Thursday.” On as many Thursdays as possible (I am a busy grad student after all) I will try to write a little snippet about some German that I learned during the week, or share a story about German gone wrong (it’s pretty easy to mess up).
To begin, I’m going to tell you the best word in the German language (that I know of so far; this is likely to change often). It’s Schnee.
Schnee means “snow.” It’s my favorite word right now because of both its meaning and awesome pronunciation.
You might think that it snows a ton over here in Germany. In some places, it does, but here by the Bodensee I actually don’t get a lot of Schnee. The lake keeps the air relatively warm and humid. The couple of times that it has snowed so far, it melted right away or quickly turned to rain, while people north of the lake got a nice dusting of Schnee. Needless to say, I’ve been so jealous.
My birthday is coming up on Sunday, so I’m traveling to Ulm to visit a Weihnachtsmarkt, or Christmas market, and have some Mexican food to celebrate! Perhaps I will get lucky and be able to run around in the Schnee at the Weihnachtsmarkt…
Cheers!
I love this idea for a post series! Schnee sounds funny when I say it in my head, but then again I’m probably pronouncing it wrong .. I learned some words while I was in Germany, but considering I was there for Oktoberfest, a lot of them have to do with drinking … PROST! 😀
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Schnee sounds funny when Germans say it as well! It’s not just in your head!
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I wish I was “lost” in Germany, too. My boyfriend studied there for a year and is always using German words. I started learning it and it was quite fun. Unfortunately, I have put it on hold for a bit. I like counting in German best especially when you get to the big numbers. I have quite gotten the guttural sound yet though. Hopefully I will when I pick it up again. 😊
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Pronunciation is more difficult here than in any other language I’ve ever tried, even more so than the semester of Arabic I took!
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Oh my. All the best though.
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This is such a great concept, and I’m definitely going to remember the word for snow in German now. My only question is how to you pronounce it? Is the “ch” like “sh” or a hard “ch” like in chore. Thanks so much!
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It’s more like the “sh” sound in English. So the way you can think about it is “shh, be quiet,” with “knee” added onto the end of it. So in English, it might be easier to think about it like “shnee,” without the c. If you want to hear it, check out the entry for Schnee on PONS which includes audio for German words: http://en.pons.com/translate?q=Schnee&l=deen&in=&lf=de.
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Good luck with your German studies. The only thing I can say in German is “I’m hungry” but mispronounced to sound like (I’ve been told) “I have young chickens.” 🙂
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That’s pretty hilarious actually. I’ve not been told what I sound like, but I do have quite a few difficulties with pronunciation.
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I found it a hard language to pronounce. I had a German friend teach me a few expressions a couple of decades ago (all of which I’ve now forgotten except for the one I mentioned before). Apparently, I sounded quite a lot like a cat coughing up a hairball.
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